Hiring through Facebook ads when nobody is applying

Why job boards underperform here

The pool of people actively job-hunting for a skilled trade in a given county on a given week is very small. You are competing for the same handful of applicants as everyone else, and paying for the privilege.

Paid social reaches the far larger group who are not looking but would move for the right thing. That is the whole argument.

What an ad that works looks like

Specific pay. This is the single biggest factor and the one most employers avoid. 'Competitive rates' tells a tradesperson you are probably below market, because anyone above market says so.

Then: the hours, the location, the type of work, and one genuine reason to move — a newer van, better tools, no weekends, the work being local.

• —State the actual pay or a real range
• —Say where the work is and how far the travel goes
• —Say the hours, honestly
• —One or two genuine reasons somebody would move
• —Photographs of the actual team and vans
• —A way to apply that takes under two minutes

Make applying trivially easy

A tradesperson is not writing a cover letter from a phone at lunchtime. A lead form with three questions and a phone number will out-perform a careers page by a wide margin.

Follow up the same day. Applicants who are not actively looking cool off fast and the good ones are gone within the week.

Show the place, not the logo

People move jobs to somewhere that looks well run. Photographs of a tidy yard, decent equipment and people who look content do more than any list of benefits.

This is the same content that helps you win customers, which is why the two campaigns support each other.

What it costs

A few hundred euro will usually fill a trade role in an Irish county, against recruitment agency fees of several thousand. The gap is large enough that it is worth trying before anything else.

It also builds an audience of people who know your business exists as an employer, which makes the next hire easier.